In this satire, Albert Brooks pokes fun at government bureaucracy, international relations, show-business egos and, most of all, himself.
By:Jay Boyar
Comedians, of all people, seem to have taken Sept. 11 especially hard maybe because the terrorist attacks made it so tough to laugh.
In The Aristocrats (just out on DVD), we learn that Gilbert Gottfried was nearly booed off the stage of New York Friars Club by his fellow comics for daring to tell 9/11 jokes too soon after the attacks.
And in the recent, under-appreciated Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic, Silverman speaks of having taken revenge on Osama bin Laden by buying up such Internet domain names as osamabinladen.com and osamabinladen.net.
"And then who’s he gotta come to?" asks the defiant comic. "Big S. Well, guess what? It’s not for sale."
Silverman is kidding, and yet she and Gottfried are far from the only members of their profession who have felt called upon to offer some sort of response to terrorism. Which brings me to Albert Brooks, whose answer has been to write and direct an entire film that takes off on that topic.
In Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World, Brooks plays a version of himself, a standup comic and filmmaker who is asked by the State Department to investigate what Muslims find funny, as a way of furthering the cause of world peace.
"Maybe the only way to understand somebody is to see what makes them laugh," says actor/politician Fred Dalton Thompson who, also playing himself, gives Brooks the assignment to seek out Muslims in India and Pakistan.
As you’d expect from Albert Brooks, whose films include Mother (1996) and Lost in America (1985), Looking for Comedy is satirical. He pokes fun at government bureaucracy, international relations, show-business egos and, most of all, himself.
The film enlists Penny Marshall, for example, to take a shot at the lame 2003 remake of The In-Laws starring Brooks and Michael Douglas. And a running gag involves the semi-embarrassing fact that Brooks’ most famous accomplishment is having provided the voice of a fish in Finding Nemo.
And yet, Looking for Comedy is surprisingly kinder and gentler than the Brooks norm. Even though the film mocks earnestness, there is something quite earnest at its core. Maybe that’s the 9/11 effect. In any case, Brooks treads lightly when it comes to the Muslim world.
The young Indian woman (Sheetal Sheth) that his character hires as a secretary is attractive, sweet-natured and highly intelligent. Her can-do spirit and inexhaustible curiosity are, if not exactly funny, really very sweet. With his curly hair, perpetually puzzled expression and low, nasal delivery, Brooks the performer adds a lot to the film. Some of the best gags involve his reactions to the State Department men assigned to help him. One is a big fan who pesters him with questions; the other is openly hostile and seems unclear about just who this Brooks guy is, exactly.
It’s funny, too, when Al Jazeera finds out that Brooks is in the region and suggests that he star in a sitcom for the network whose title roughly translates as That Darn Jew! (In a subtle joke about the depths of show-business desperation, Brooks’ wife tells him to think about the offer, advising him not to turn it down just because it’s television.)
As funny as Looking for Comedy is, it’s hard to imagine it catching on with a large public. It’s not just that Brooks’ humor is sophisticated: There’s always been something a bit poky about his timing as a director, and he has a tendency to muffle his points and even some of his jokes.
And although the jokes he makes about himself are often good ones, perhaps he should have played a somewhat more relatable sort of character. What if, for example, he’d been a mid-level State Department employee who’d been chosen for this particular assignment because he’d put on a fairly funny skit at the department’s last Christmas party?
Still, if you’re on or near Brooks’ wavelength, chances are you’ll find a lot to like in Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World. Brooks’ new film may not usher in a glorious new era of world peace, but it does provide some solid laughs. And that, finally, is all we can ask of comedians and all they should ask of themselves.
Rated PG-13. Contains drug content and brief strong language.